


Memories

by PreludeInZ



Series: DrabbleRouser [6]
Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Humour, Nuns, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-16
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2018-02-25 13:15:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2623082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PreludeInZ/pseuds/PreludeInZ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I don't have anything against nuns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memories

> lavenderposy asked:
> 
> Memories !

[1fort-2fort-redfort-blufort](http://1fort-2fort-redfort-blufort.tumblr.com/post/102670527490/memories):

**Scout/Pauling - Memories**

She held her pen funny. Scout drew, just as a hobby, he wasn’t very good at it, he’d just always liked to doodle on things. He didn’t hold a pen like that, but what did he know anyway. Maybe she knew better than he did, she’d gone to a really fancy private school, he knew that about her. He’d gone rather indifferently to a public school, when he could be forced to. When his ma had threatened to take the hide off him if she caught him hanging around back alleys during school hours again.

And he liked to look at Miss Pauling’s hands, they were pretty, small and delicate. But she held her pen funny. She wrote with her right hand, the fingers of her left drumming idly on the desk. She had perched on top of it, her clipboard in her lap as she took down notes. Holding her pen funny.

He was staring, but she hadn’t noticed and he didn’t care, because she was gorgeous and what the hell. She didn’t like to be told she was gorgeous, she’d told him off for that before, but it was really, really hard not to just blurt it out. So he just stared instead.

At her left hand, though. Even with her fingers drumming, there was a line of red welts across the backs of her knuckles. When had that happened? She’d been sitting at the desk for half an hour, they were waiting for a delivery. Scars, then. She’d had them and he’d never noticed before.

"What’s with your hand?"

"Mm?"

"Um." He’d pretty much admitted to staring at her by now, but she didn’t seem to have decided to mind. Yet. "Your hand, the left one. On the knuckles. Scars?"

Miss Pauling looked down, smiled wryly at the back of her hand. “Oh. Nuns.”

He blinked at this. “I don’t…uh. Nuns?”

She shrugged. “At school. I was left-handed when I started out, when my parents first enrolled me. I started second grade, and I knew my letters with my left hand, but the left hand does the devil’s work, I guess. So the Sisters held me back a grade, and they would rap me on the knuckles with a ruler whenever I forgot and switched to the left. It took about a year, but I changed over permanently. I guess I’m ambidextrous, but I still use the right out of habit. The left feels weird. I mean it feels…right. But wrong. Not like the right. Muscle memory. You know what I mean.”

Miss Pauling held her pen funny, and now this was something that made Scout see red. She’d been hit on the back of the hand for a year, with a  _ruler_ , by nuns (who prior to now Scout had not had any particular problems with). Long enough that she still had scars. Scout had been an unruly terror throughout his entire academic career, but no one had ever  _hit_ him for it. Not in an official capacity, at least. ” _Jesus_.”

"Yes, well, I suppose they figured he was responsible for the right hand." She laughed a little, just a dry little giggle. "It didn’t really matter, in the end. I do the devil’s work with both, now."

"That ain’t funny, Miss Pauling, that’s just….god. That’s real awful."

"Is it?" She held up her left hand, idly examined the fingers. Pretty, gorgeous, god damned devil’s fingers. "I guess it was awful, back then. I remember I used to cry about it, but they didn’t like  _that_ , either. I was only little, I didn’t really know what I was doing wrong.”

He flared at that, “You weren’t doing  _anything_ wrong. Christ god, Miss Pauling. I am just…I’m gonna punch the next nun I see. Swear to god.”

She thought that was hilariously funny. She laughed the way she did when she couldn’t help it, with a tiny, embarrassing little snort at the end, that made her blush and cover her mouth. He grinned in spite of himself. “You should switch back. To the right hand. You hold your pen funny, I was wonderin’ why. There’s no nuns around here, an’ I’d punch ‘em if there were.”

And now she looked at him, with that same wry smile. She put her pen down on the clipboard. Picked it back up in her left hand. She winked, and still smiling, returned to making her notes. That looked better. That looked right.


End file.
